


Five Secrets Dr Michèl Fournier takes with him when he leaves AR4 (And the one he's about to share)

by ArwenLune



Series: Rock Happy 'verse [22]
Category: Generation Kill, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Asexual Character, Backstory, Competence Kink, Family Feels, Feels, Friendship, LGBTQ Female Character, Multi, Original Character of Color, Secrets, Team, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-13 09:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1221157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been their scientist, their civilian, their charge, their lightning rod, their observer, their friend and their confidante for four years and hundreds of worlds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crushes

**1: Crushes.**

The female members of the military each have their own way of encouraging the men they work with to treat them the same as anybody else. Michèl is a trained observer of people, and he sometimes wonders how most of the men can miss how much energy it must cost.

Somebody like Sergeant Dusty Mehra wears her hostility like armour, a cold, spiky layer of 'Don't you dare hit on me' that she rarely lays down. Michèl doesn't know her very well apart from as Lee's friend, but he doubts she ever completely relaxes apart from when there are no men around. Brad Colbert doesn't know half how honoured he should be that he's the one she's willing to let see inside the armour.

Lee has an uncanny knack for not even appearing on the radar of the men she works with. It's not that she's unattractive, though she doesn't draw the eye in the way Laura Cadman does. It's that she manages to exude such an aura of asexuality that the consideration somehow never seems to enter people's minds. Lee is amazingly successful at positioning herself as sisterly in such a way that Michèl thinks that Brad probably hasn't ever seen her as somebody he could find attractive.

(There's the other thing, which is Lee's obsession with family and not losing people. Brothers are lost less easily than partners, though Paul Warszawski proved not even brothers are permanent.)

If they ever do think about her as a sexual being, they assume she's lesbian, which is an assumption she's happy to leave in existence. As far as he knows there are no rumours or speculation about her, and that's exactly what she wants. It's how he knows he is the only one who knows this:

It was only at the start, and she shoved herself over it with alacrity, but for the first few months Captain Avery joined the team, Lee Brittner had some decidedly unprofessional feelings for her new CO. Michèl thinks it was probably at least half about Avery accepting her as somebody worth listening to, which was a hell of a change after Captain Tarson.

As for how he found out... well.

One time early on in Darren Avery's tenure on the team, during a long, long walk with the others far enough ahead to be out of earshot… Michèl had been looking at the Captain's back, thoughts a million miles away.

Sometimes he forgets that when he observe his teammates, they observe him back.

"It's the competence thing, isn't it?" Lee had said, catching him look.

"What?" he'd startled.

"The Captain. Competence."

He gave her a look of non-comprehension that she clearly wasn't buying.

"I mean, the looks and the accent don't hurt. But it's mostly the competence, at least for me."

Michèl's eyebrows rose up.

"You? Really?"

She shrugged. "Atlantis is full of crush-worthy people if you're into competence."

He turned that over in his head, mentally reframing the way her attention was drawn by craftspeople on markets, by musicians. Huh.

"It doesn't bother you?"

He nodded his head in the direction of the Captain ahead of them. Even if the interest was mutual, anything between her and the Captain would be impossible.

"It'll pass," she shrugged, and he heard in that the acceptance that this was how it went, that it had happened before and would again.

"He makes you feel _welcome_ ," he'd finally said, feeling like he ought to reward how open she'd just been with him, even if he was about as used to sharing these sorts of feelings as she was. "Makes me just want to.. be near. Just bask in the glow."

"Brain crush?"

"That's a good name for it."

Knowing what he did from that conversation, he'd recognised her crushes over the years they'd worked together. Major Lorne, Captain Vega - he was pretty sure that one had been mutual and turned into actual dating, at least for a while. Tøre of the Irigi people, who played achingly beautiful harp music. Colonel Carter. _Definitely_ Colonel Carter.

He knows Lee worked for her image as ice queen, worked hard to take any possibility of attraction out of the interaction with the men she works with. She's fought too hard for her position to compromise it with anything so messy as romantic or sexual feelings, and that's why she keeps these things carefully to herself. Michèl would never consider making her life harder, so he'll take this secret with him.


	2. Fears

Captain Darren Avery was one of the Brits brought in specifically for the Atlantis project, so prior to shipping out to Pegasus he'd had six weeks of Intro To The Stargate Program and gate-specific training. On top of an accomplished career and many successful SAS missions it had been enough to qualify him to lead a Gate team; especially in the time that offworld-qualified officers were still thin on the ground in Atlantis.

That didn't take away the fact that he'd stepped through a gate a grand total of 18 times before he came to Atlantis.

It was a nothing mission, as these things are counted. Their fourth or fifth as a team. Gate in the middle of a community. Friendly waving people on the MALPs vid feed.

Rather less friendly people waving weapons as soon as the gate had shut down behind the team.

Michèl had been behind Darren, so he had only see the Captain's reaction as reflected on Lee. She had taken the initiative for the first time ever, because Captain Tarson had done a thorough job of convincing her her input was neither wanted nor needed.

"Come sir, let's go talk to them."

"Right."

Even if they wanted to gate straight out, they still needed to get at the DHD, which was about 20 metres away from the platform.

Warszawski had nudged Michèl, and they'd followed the officers to where they were going to talk to some of the locals. It happened to be close to the DHD, which was by no means a coincidence. Michèl nodded slightly, and he and the Sergeant drifted to the side a little until they were within arm's length of their way home, Warszawski casually covering him, P90 still loosely in his arms.

The Captain's conversation with the locals had turned from 'We Come In Peace' to 'No Problem, We Will Leave In Peace' to 'I Wouldn't Recommend Trying To Stop Us, No Really' until Lee had very casually taken a flashbang grenade from her vest, and Michèl had taken that cue and dialled the Gate.

They'd made it back to Atlantis with only a couple of bruises, and they hadn't – as far as they'd seen – killed or even seriously wounded anybody. As failed missions went, it had been an extremely minor incident. Hardly worth mentioning for Warszawski and Lt. Brittner.

Michèl was fairly certain he was the only one who'd noticed the Captain's hesitation to step through the gate for months afterward. The others had been too busy filling their own roles, taking on their expanded responsibilities, enjoying the fact that the new Captain wanted to hear their opinions.

The Captain had had to force himself to step through the gate, to throw himself headfirst into whatever was waiting for them on the other side. Being known to be 'gate shy' was the last thing a new Gate team CO needed. If he hadn't gotten over it, he would have been replaced sooner rather than later.

That didn't take away that he'd been fearful. It had taken months before he'd taken those steps forward without schooling his breathing into a rhythm Michèl had later learned to identify as sniper breathing.

Michèl was quite certain that the others would never think less of the Captain if they knew about this. He'd seen them all – including himself – go through periods where the excitement of exploring the galaxy was a distant second behind 'Just have to get through this' and 'I have to, they're counting on me' and 'Oh God, please be a boring mission'. But in some ways Darren could have tunnel vision about what a leader ought to be, so he would never want it known. Michèl thought it was stupid, because sharing these fears would most likely cause the others to draw in a little tighter to help – but he'd keep this secret for his friend.

 


	3. Pride

It had taken less than an hour for Michèl to conclude that Sergeant Brad Colbert was going to have a hard time settling in. For one, the team wasn't used to an inexperienced sergeant. Paul Warszawski had been on AR-4 since the team had been formed, and even then he'd already been on an SGC Gate team for years before coming to Atlantis. But more than the team not being used to it, _Colbert_ wasn't used to _being_ inexperienced.

Even without having heard Darren about the man's record, everything about Colbert's body language, his careful replies and the steel in his spine had spoken volumes. Here was a man used to being the best his unit had to offer, the most experienced, the one others looked to when things got serious. He was used to being the star player, and feeling out of his depth – without even the bare minimum of a month of gate training - was going to be hard on him.

Michèl wasn't sure if the others hadn't really noticed or just hadn't drawn attention to it. They'd been caught up in their own drama, a quiet, counterpoint pattern of inheld anger and a sort of complex, proprietary sibling love. Neither of them were cruel, though there could be a kind of brutal efficiency about Lee Brittner, a quality that made her the go-to person for crises (and passed over for delicate social situations in favour of people with better nunchi) that could look very much like cruelty. She'd chosen to prioritise her Paramedic exams over the team she hadn't been sure she'd be staying on, and let Avery deal with 'his' Marine.

It hadn't been kind. If she hadn't so clearly been struggling to keep going at all, Michèl would have had harsher words for her. In the end though, it had been a situation of the Captain's making, and Michèl and Darren had had a few pointed conversations about the fairness of dropping an inexperienced Marine into these kinds of team dynamics.

"He's a Recon Marine," Darren had said. "Nothing short of prolonged torture will get him to even admit he's struggling."

That didn't mean Michèl hadn't seen it, hadn't hid winces in sympathy whenever he saw Brad Colbert clench his hands into frustrated fists as he tried to anticipate a situation and just _couldn't_. Whenever the others had discussed things Colbert didn't have background information on. Whenever the team had fallen into well-worn patterns that Colbert just didn't know.

In that pride he'd also seen the man rebuff the first tentative olive branches Lee had extended. Michèl has learned that Lee's tendency to step in to offer help or information is her way of taking care of you; she hates going into situations unprepared and her information hoarding is part of what makes her good at her job. That kind of care doesn't fit with Marine Corps culture, but Paul Warszawski had understood it anyway. Colbert had interpreted it as an assumption of incompetence and it had taken weeks before she'd been willing to open herself up again.

Despite the early problems, the Sergeant has worked hard to find the gaps, to shape himself into what the team needs. In turn the others have changed too, made space, swapped responsibilities around, reshaped themselves around the new team member.

As the only civilian, Michèl has the luxury of observing moments from the outside, watching the others communicate with a glance and coordinate actions without more than a gesture. Just over a year into Sergeant Brad Colbert's entrance into the team, it feels like he's always been there. Never let it be said that his pride is unjustified.


	4. Grief

In most people's memories AR4 was always Avery-Brittner-Fournier-Warzawski until it became Avery-Brittner-Fournier-Colbert. Few remember Harmin, the young Athosian man who served on the team in the first year. At the time, Michèl stayed in Atlantis and analysed photos and video footage offworld teams brought him, and worked on his field qualifications.

And in the first year, Harmin died in a skirmish. The team was on a planet to free AR-1 from one of those 'We didn't know these people would rat us out to the Genii' capture situations. Captain Tarson - Avery's predecessor - had sent Harmin to talk to the locals – you know, the ones that had betrayed AR-1 – and Warzawski with him to watch his back.

What happened next was known only through Warszawski's retelling, and Michèl suspected his perspective was skewed by guilt and that over-developed responsibility muscle his teammates all seem to have. Suffice to say that Warszawski had failed in his duty to keep the younger man alive, and no amount of talk could ever convince him otherwise.

It had been hard to step into that void when Michèl joined the team, though perhaps easier than Colbert would have it years later. The inclusion of a Social Scientist had changed the function of the team and so the changes needed to accommodate Michèl weren't only personal. Captain Tarson had been largely oblivious – or perhaps just uninterested in involving himself in the interpersonal nitty-gritty of the team – but it had taken a long time before Warszaski voluntarily socialised with Michèl, and he'd never grown comfortable with being paired up together.

Then Captain Darren Avery had taken over after Tarson's death. In many ways uncannily observant, Avery had immediately taken to pairing Brittner with Warszawski and himself with Michèl. It had taken a long time of observing the Sergeant for Michèl to understand the man was terrified of 'getting another civilian killed' and felt more comfortable paired with Brittner. Once he'd understood though, Michèl had gotten serious about his own training.

Up until then he'd seen his place on the team in the way Tarson had treated him, as the civilian they escorted around the galaxy. From then on out he'd vowed to train to be a more equal part of the team. He'd never gotten his skill levels up to USMC or SAS standards of course, but that wasn't expected of him. He'd become proficient enough not to be their main and constant worry. While none of the others had ever said something outright, he'd felt the team dynamics shift into something where he was their teammate and friend rather than their civilian charge.


	5. Revelry

Everybody knew that it was tradition for Michèl Fournier and Lee Brittner to take a 3-week summer leave together, that they rented a camper van and went on a road trip. What nobody knew was that the road trip lead to the Black Rock desert in Nevada and that they spent the next ten days losing themselves in the Burning Man festival.

It would have been unusual, but not particularly noteworthy for it to be known that Michèl – who was after all an Anthropologist and could claim professional interest – to attend Burning Man. But Lee, nobody's favourite in the upper echelons of the US Air Force, was better off keeping this sort of thing quiet.

She volunteered as one of the event's emergency medics, because Michèl thought it was physically impossible for her to just be there without feeling useful. Apparently it was downright relaxing to treat a steady stream of blisters, dehydration and sun overexposure, with the occasional moment of handholding somebody who'd taken funny pills.

Burning Man was ten days of camping in comfort, in the desert heat that was both their element. Ten days of bucking every authority figure ruling their past and their present. Ten days of dropping their guards as far as they were ever dropped. Ten days of ruling over their own schedule, dancing to exhaustion and immersing themselves in every artistic experience and alternative subculture that could be found.

Also, ten days of living the kind of sexuality that couldn't be indulged in with the military always looking over their shoulders. Michèl found people who experience theirs the same hands-off way he did, and..

It's second nature to Lee to be constantly aware of who might be watching. Burning Man is the only time ever Michèl has ever seen the starch fully leave her spine. (Except maybe that one time Ieneg when people gave her funny fertility tea, but they've agreed never to speak of that again, and non-consensual drug use doesn't count, anyway.)

In her normal life, Lee spends the majority of her time pushing against the perception that she's smaller, weaker, less capable, than the military men around her. Here, without the outside pressure, it's like she uncoils to about twice her size. Among civilians she has the presence of a giant, sure and with fluid dancer's poise, and she turns heads, whether she notices or not. She's also, amidst people who have had a lot more time to explore and indulge the alternatives sides of themselves, a strange mix of purposeful and innocent.

It's a mix that attracts a specific kind of person, and here, without need for to hide this side of herself, she usually spends more nights with those people than in the camper she and Michèl share. Not that either of them keep to any kind of rhythm; coming off 28 hour days will do that to you, and Burning Man is a round-the-clock experience. It's not unusual for her to come to the camper in the morning to catch up sleep for her medic shifts, though they always meet up to have dinner together.

She never shares details about flings, but he does fondly remember the time he saw her hesitate, and then realise that this was a place where she could gleefully, joyfully kiss both halves of the firedancer couple she'd spent the last few nights with goodbye, right out in the open. They'd taught her firedancing. One day this will come handy on a mission, and he's sad to know he won't be there when it finally does.

Photography at Burning Man is on an ask-first basis, and she never gives permission. Less evidence is better, and so on. Michèl has a single photo she agreed to. It's an evening shot of her from the back while dancing, a little blurry around the edges. There's a vertical circular fire trail haloing her torso from the fire stick she's spinning. She's wearing a wide skirt that's floating up around her thighs with the motion of the spin she's in the middle of, and nothing else. For all that she's careful about propriety on Atlantis, Lee still has about as much body modesty as you'd expect from somebody who's spent half their life in the military.

There's a mehndi tattoo stretching across her back, vividly red in the light of the fire between her and the camera.

Some pierced and tattoo'ed metalworking artist from New York had drawn Lee's attention with beautiful blacksmithing work. Her boyfriend had seen the heavy burn scars on Lee's leg and gotten inspired, so Lee had spent half a day stretched out on her stomach on a table, and the guy had given her a giant stylised phoenix rising from the mess of scar tissue, tail feathers trailing up her hip and wings spreading out over her back, wingtips curling protectively over the caps of her shoulders.

He's pretty sure that at some point, when she feels secure enough in her position and her place in the world, she's going to have that inked on permanently.

It's always sad to see her get ready to return to the SGC. See her scrub at the last traces of mehndi, put that joy de vivre back under wraps. To see her compress herself until she's the person who fits inside her uniform again. It is what it is, though, and he knows she wouldn't trade her job for anything. He's glad he's allowed to know this side of her.

She's been prodding him to 'get on with the healing' (hearing her joke about his injuries is oddly reassuring) because it's only a few months before Burning Man. He knows she's also already researched what it would take to get him some kind of mobility vehicle on the playa, so they are definitely going again.

He hopes she won't change her mind after he has said what needs to be said, and done what needs to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever find out something about a character that just clicks things into context in hindsight? I thought of Lee and Michèl going to Burning Man and it just made so much _sense_...


	6. ...and the one secret he's about to tell them

He's off the team, and he can already see how that's going to be a problem. Not because he's unmissable or irreplaceable, but because the team is so used to having him in their circle, that his absence is pulling them out of alignment. Instead of the closed circuit of [Darren–Lee–Brad–Michèl] they now have [Darren–Lee–Brad] with [Michèl] tore off like a limb, and [Adrian] plugged into the hole like a makeshift wound dressing.

The new AR-4 isn't bonding, and it won't until Michèl goes back to Earth.

Laura knows this. She's part of the circuit, but not as closely as the others; she's only with them on rescue missions, and of late she's been spending a lot more time on Earth to work on her PhD. Michèl chose her to have this conversation with, because he couldn't lay it down with anybody else. She's the only one who can react with more reason than gut feeling, because AR4 has always only ever had half of Laura Cadman.

He doesn't want to go. He loves these people like family, like siblings. He loves Brad's look of wonder when they encounter new and fantastical things. He loves how Darren's swearing sounds like home. He loves Lee's intent expression when she learns local dances, and he loves the way all of them will sit in a circle to eat and wordlessly and without looking swap MRE contents, and he loves-- Il l' _aime_ \-- he _loves_ them and he loves Atlantis, and he _doesn't want to go_.

Adrian is still raw and bleeding from his own losses. Michèl might be hurting from his injuries and having to watch his team go through the gate without him, but Adrian has lost his team, watched them die, and had to return through the gate on his own. Adrian may not be ready to take his place in AR-4s circuit, to be more than a colleague to them, but that place needs to be open for him. As long as Michèl is in Atlantis, as long as he is their go-to person to wind down after a mission, that is never going to happen.

So he mentioned to Daniel Jackson that he was thinking about returning to Earth, and Jackson offered him a position on the returning databurst. There's always work at the SGC for somebody with Michèl's skillset, and he'll have time to start publishing again. Maybe he'll get to the point where he wants to build a life on Earth after years of being happy to be elsewhere.

Maybe.

Michèl looks around his kitchen, the place where so many of his favourite moments here have happened. Stares out the window for long moments, because it is that evening hour that lights up the city like it's made of golden glass and lace and light.

Then he hears the door to his quarters slide open, and throws a last glance at the kitchen table. He's measured out ingredients for bread; Lee can knead dough while the others peel tharrus squashes. It's always best to give them something to do with their hands during difficult conversations.

He has done his crying in advance, because he is about to tell them about something none of them will want him to do, and he will have to stand by his decision even though he doesn't want to do it either. This is his gift, though it hurts to give and it will hurt to receive; that they can leave him behind when they go through the Gate, and that Adrian can take the place in their circle he so desperately needs.

That they can reincarnate as a new version of the team.

"Bonsoir guys. How was the mission?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sadface*


End file.
